Conference Post 1: Agenda Setting

I was at the National Communication Association’s annual convention this weekend and have two blog posts that will be coming out of this. The ideas I present here first came to me at the GIFTS session (where people present great ideas for teaching students). I was standing in for a friend presenting her teaching activity on Agenda Setting Theory. I was pleased at people’s responses to the theory and intrigued by one issue that kept coming up during the presentation. But first I will briefly explain the theory.

The idea of Agenda Setting Theory is that the media does not necessarily determine how we think about particular issues. Instead, news media “sets the agenda” or determines what we will be talking about. In the activity, students are put into groups and given a set of news values (like timeliness, uniqueness, number of audience members impacted, etc.). They pretend that they are in charge of selecting news stories for a television program and must select four out of ten stories they are given to run. The top three stories the students select are always the same. It demonstrates how using these news values causes viewers to perceive a few specific issues as more important to discuss and form opinions on than others.

Every time I presented this activity, one person would always say “like Ebola.” And I agree. The media has indeed set up Ebola as an issue that the public at large should be concerned about. And yes, people have different opinions about what should be done and how the situation should be handled, but the fact is that the media has placed Ebola firmly “on the agenda.”

This, as a result, has placed the actions of those responding to the epidemic under a microscope. I am torn about whether this is a good or a bad thing. On the one hand, this could result in policymakers’ actions being held to a higher standard because they will be highly publicized. But as we saw from the NPR article, the climate of fear about containment has in fact allowed human rights to be disregarded with limited public backlash. But, this story of hardship was stilled covered by someone. On the other hand, actions must then be taken in light of how it will look to the public, not necessarily what is best for those directly affected. There are both positives and negatives associated with an issue being put “on the agenda.”

But my question is, what stories are not making the cut? Are there other issues that would benefit from public attention and concern but that do not have enough news value? I am certain that there are, but I could not identify for sure which issues these would be. My greatest application for global health that has come out of this thought process is: how can workers in global health services manipulate these news values to get issues that need attention air time? I recognize that news coverage comes with unintended negative consequences, but the good could outweigh these effects for some issues.